Skirting Boundaries
by myoue
Summary: In which there are no titans to be killed today. Eren watches Corporal Levi do whatever it is corporals do in their free time.


**i think i like levi pov kind of**

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Eren sits while basking in the afternoon sunlight that falls through meticulously cleaned windowpanes. His hands are held behind his head as he leans back precariously with feet up on the desk and donning a rather bemused expression. Corporal Levi sits right in front of him in his own desk, which is much larger and much more authoritative-looking. Levi is semi-concentrating on the papers placed underneath his ink pen and semi-distracted by Eren who continues to stare absentmindedly at him. Levi doesn't even have to look up, he can feel the boy's gaze on him like a magnifying glass beneath the sun.

"What is it, Eren," Levi asks after the two of them sit in uninterrupted silence for far too long to be comfortable.

"What," comes Eren's dumb response.

"_What_," Levi repeats, "are you here for."

The questions are not really questions and are more like demands or, given Eren's stubborn personality, fruitless, air-wasting statements. Levi doesn't even know why he bothers to say anything at all to the boy when he knows for a fact he will only be unimpressed by any answer he gets.

"Am I not allowed to be here, corporal?" Eren asks earnestly.

Levi rolls his eyes but still doesn't look up. "There's no rule against it."

"Then I'll just stay here."

Levi's eye twitches. He makes another mark on the papers he's writing on. He hears Eren shift in his seat and he thinks that maybe the kid is getting up because he has gotten bored with the corporal's unresponsiveness and that in fact he was playing Levi for a two-bit fool with that last line, but alas it was merely him recrossing his legs on the desk and sighing in new found comfort. Levi can almost feel the mocking and the derisive smug smirk from the kid in front of him.

Levi tries to concentrate on whatever the hell he was writing before ten minutes ago but he just can't. "Don't you have some titan class to go to?"

"Not at four in the afternoon," remarks Eren.

"Some kind of titan-killing training?"

"Finished. Three years ago, in fact."

"Some _friends_ to hang out with?"

Eren was silent at that. Levi briefly wondered if he had touched a nerve, but he knew for a fact Eren had friends. Or at least people whom he talked to that didn't want to gut him or slice off the back of his head. In his graduating class or whatever the kids had nowadays.

"I'm not your friend, Jaeger," Levi continues when Eren doesn't say anything and he thinks that maybe he took a wrong turn bringing this up. "I'm your superior."

Eren looks serious. "I never said we were friends, corporal."

"Good."

"Why, do you want to be friends?"

Levi stops. He hadn't expected that. This line of thinking the kid had; it was absurd. Completely absurd. If only he could dissect Eren's brain, see which way the nerves connected and why they were so vastly unlike a competent human's. A normal person wouldn't dare say things like that to him. A normal person wouldn't even wish to stay in the same room as him for longer than sixty seconds.

Levi sighs because he knew that all he was doing was giving the boy ideas. He was about to say no, he didn't need things like friends, but when he turned it over in his head it seemed like Eren would just reply with something beyond dull and incredibly naïve like _everyone needs friends, corporal!_ and he really didn't need that either.

"No, I don't want to be friends," Levi enunciates.

That should have made it clear but one look at Eren tells Levi otherwise. His unpredictably bright eyes aren't bright because the sun from the window had arbitrarily decided to manifest itself in their reflections, but rather it seemed his eyes held a hopeful gaze trying not to be marred by Levi's constant rejections. The boy was staring at him quizzically, as if analyzing his every word and trying to find another way around them. Another way that suited him conveniently, because apparently nothing got Eren completely down.

"I didn't want to be friends anyway," Eren all but whispers so quietly that it makes Levi hang on every word.

It was a double entendre that Levi was more than sure that Eren was aware of, but he doesn't want to think too much on it. In fact, the more he tries to purposely expel Eren's seemingly innocent invitation away from his mind, the more it plagues his thoughts. He isn't even sure if he was supposed to hear it, wondering if the boy was just mumbling to himself and that there may be absolutely nothing to worry about.

But it doesn't help. Levi flips over the papers in front him, shuffling them back and forth, and what was he doing with these again?

Levi looks up to see a side profile of Eren's eyes half-lidded and his head staring out the window before he uncrosses his legs from atop the desk and lays his cheek on the surface.

"Are you bored, kid," Levi asks as a statement since he feels like if he doesn't ask, it won't be true.

"No," comes Eren's muffled reply laced with the attitude of an impatient teenager.

"It's because you're here with a boring as shit old man."

Levi isn't one to skirt around niceties and tells it like it is. But what it is is usually harsh and demanding and what could be considered arrogant and narcissistic but, for once, it seems as if he really doesn't know what any of this is right now.

"It's quite the opposite, actually." Eren's reply is as airy as the wind that bristles through his hair from the open classroom window.

It's because Eren may be a typical kid with typical looks that says typical things to other people (who may or may not be his friends). But the thing is, when he's in front of Levi his usual looks turn simplistically beautiful, his harebrained words turn into a number of unpredictable things, and he becomes a kid who is anything but typical. And Levi isn't sure if he's special, or if he's just blowing things wildly out of proportion.

Levi doesn't even know what he gets out of Eren being here, or what he gets out of Eren saying these pointless things to him.

And then he remembers. By still being here, Eren's invitation remains standing. Eren came here for a reason, there's no doubt about that now. The boy continues to sit, continues to wait, until Levi is done doing what was supposed to have taken a few hours that will now probably take a few days.

But a few days that is not today, that's what's important.

Levi puts down his pen and Eren notices because he looks up curiously. His bright eyes are still bright albeit with just a small shadow of a doubt. However, that doubt is erased when Levi leans in his chair and pushes back to make room between himself and the desk.

Eren gets up to travel around the desk and places himself in front of Levi. He doesn't have to be told twice as he straddles Levi's lap and circles his arms around the corporal's neck.

"I don't want to be friends," Eren repeats again, as if he thinks Levi didn't fully understand the first time.

And Levi only sighs because this kid is always saying the stupidest things.


End file.
